First the good news: Mary McCarthy has not mellowed, certainly not in
the way that some Eastern intellectuals of the '30s and '40s did when
they moved West to become hot-tub philosophers. McCarthy, fortunately,
lives in Paris, where a sharp critical intelligence is as prized as a
set of newly honed kitchen knives. Her Olympian view has also remained
keen.

But in her seventh novel, the first since Birds of America (1971), she
has overflown her subject.